Category Archives: United Kingdom

BUCKLEY’S PALACE, Victorian, Wednesday (NNN) — The Queen’s Speech today announced new government plans to help get the country back on its feet and beat the Great Slight Economic Downturn by beating the people at the sharp end of it.

Jobcentres will employ lie detectors to train the unemployed to beat polygraph testing and maintain the convincing demeanor and operant-conditioning-induced emotionless psychopathy so helpful in job interviews, the modern workplace and the Church of Scientology. Staff will also be trained on the polygraphs so as to improve their skills at telling benefit recipients that no-one is available to handle their case right now, that they should wait at the upstairs desk or that they should call a never-answered 0870 number or lose their benefits. So as to eliminate child poverty, single mothers will be expected to be ready for work within 48 hours of giving birth, though this will be extended to 96 hours on medical advice from a Jobcentre doctor.

Tenured parasite upon public funds and author of the recommendations Professor Paul Gregg of Bristol University admitted the idea was to punish people by creating a “hassle” in their lives. Unions, welfare groups and millions of unemployed people kindly offered to return the favour.

Immigrants who make no effort to integrate will have to wait longer to become UK citizens. “Integration” will be measured by government testing of Coronation Street and Eastenders knowledge, prodigiousness of lager drinking, whether they have put sufficient personal initiative into breaking out of the brothel they are being held prisoner in, measurement of headscarf or beard length by official inspectors and whether the subject has a known propensity for being brown in public.

Bankers will be required at all times to wear a high-visibility orange vest with “Community Debtor” on the back, so that decent working people and their families are aware of the banking person’s presence and know not to acknowledge them unless they are actively lending money to them.

“My Lords and Members of the House of Commons,” the Queen finished her speech, “I … oh, sod this. I’m not mouthing this demeaning bollocks another year. You can become a bloody republic. I’m off to Australia, they respect their monarchs there.”

CHAVINGTON STREET MARKETS, Povscum, Tuesday (NNN) — The Home Office’s “Stain Of Moral Inadequacy, Social Approbation And Endeavouring To In Some Small Way Redeem One’s Lowly And Unworthy Self In The Eyes Of The Community” scheme vests were officially launched yesterday in Slough.

The words emblazoned on the vests — shortened to “Community Payback” in practice, as the full phrase was too long to fit on vests smaller than XXXL — are now mandated for convicted criminals on community service orders, to alert morally-upstanding citizenry that offenders cleaning graffiti or laying pavements are being punished rather than paid and that they are in a Sanctioned Tutting Zone.

The vests are achieving great popularity and underclass social cachet, with unofficial knockoffs proving vastly popular in street markets in more value-conscious districts. They join such fashionable items as reproduction electronic leg tags and ASBO certificates, many carrying such famous names as Goochi, Louie Vitton and Dolchi ett Gabbarner — all completely genuine, my very dear friend, I absolutely would not lie to you under any circumstances.

The Beardie Bleeding Hearts’ Union pointed out that the vests had already led to several gangland shootings, but the press waved this away as providing them with more journalistic titillation for their suburban readers to be appalled at the behaviour of those nasty common poor persons handily killing each other off.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the scheme was already a success, as measured by the many column inches in the press today. “The important thing is to be seen to be doing something.” Next month’s initiative will involve floating neon signs attached to balloons with arrows pointing down at the offender, and the following month’s will introduce vests for opposition MPs arrested under the Official Secrets Act. The Home Office is also looking into licensing rotten tomato and cabbage stalls in tutting zones.

TORCHWOOD THREE, Cardiff, Monday (NNN) — Actor John Barrowman has apologised for exposing himself on live radio on Sunday evening. Two complaints were received about the incident, from listeners J. Ross and R. Brand. “We are appalled and outraged,” they said. “We told the Daily Mail and they thought it was funny.”

Barrowman apologised for any offence caused. “I was joining in the light-hearted and fun banter of the show and went too far. I was wrong to do this and it will never happen again. Next time I’ll just say I am and not actually do so. This will make all the difference to our lovely Daily Mail-reading listeners, every one of whom I would have a romantic interlude with. Except I’m gay and married.”

Georgina Baillie was shocked. “I’m shocked, I am. Sure he doesn’t go for girls just a bit? Maybe after a few drinks when his friends aren’t there to see?”

A BBC spokeswoman said: “We do feel that the programme overstepped the mark. We are determined that lessons will be learned from this incident. All BBC radio shows going forward will contain only simulated willy exposures, with the willy exposure substituted with a Radiophonic Workshop sound effect. Probably some sort of ‘Ba-DOING!’ sound, a processed version of the sound of a wooden ruler vibrating on a desk. Everyone loves that one. In addition, we will talk about Y-fronts and boxer shorts rather than willies and balls.”

GOSPLAN, Whitehall, Saturday (NNN) — Chancellor Alistair Darling has outlined future plans to subsidise the economy per Labour’s 1983 manifesto. “We can’t of course just seize control — we’ll entice them in. I’m sure we can come to a suitable synergy between the state and the chosen corporations.”

Peter Mandelson graciously accepted the request to manage the operational aspects of the new command-and-control economy. “No company or sector can expect automatic bailout. We must evaluate likely winners. And see if they’ve been good boys and girls this year. I’m making a list, and I’m checking it twice.”

The lists are confidential. “No-one could leak the lists and not expect, say, an arrest by counter-terrorist police under the Official Secrets Act and a day or two of questioning while their home and office are searched. I speak entirely hypothetically, of course.”

Lord Mandelson clarified his earlier quote about becoming “filthy rich.” “What I said was that New Labour don’t care if you become filthy rich, as long as you pay your taxes. And remain dear, dear friends of ours.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the government was “working very closely with Barack Obama’s economic team,” producing a July 2008 photograph of himself with Mr Obama as evidence.

SKATES, Pompey, Friday (NNN) — Portsmouth City Council is introducing CCTV cameras claimed to “predict” if a crime is about to take place and alert operators to suspicious behaviour, such as loitering, apparent thought in public, walking while brown or not spending money fast enough.

Anyone spotted may then have to explain their behaviour to a police officer. “Tough on lack of consumer confidence, tough on the causes of lack of consumer confidence,” said Nick Hewitson of EDS Capita Goatse SmartCCTV. (“Consumer confidence” is a technical economics jargon term measuring willingness to casually spend ridiculous sums of cash on idiotic rubbish, particularly while drunk.)

“Only a criminal terrorist paedophile with something to hide could possibly object,” said councillor Jason Fazackarley. “Criminals will pay much better attention to their dress and grooming with cameras there. Channel 4 has tentatively offered us a reality TV show. And Channel 5 would quite like the tapes of drunken shagging in shop delivery bays.”

The project has been compared to the Tom Cruise science-fiction film Minority Report, in which psychic journalists are arrested on CCTV before they commit the crime of not peppering articles with the most obvious possible clichés copied from other papers.

However, Stephen Fry has delivered a crushing blow to the project with an unfortunately-timed negative review on his Twitter feed: “++ungood crimethink brb txtspk lol.”

CHUGGERS, NSPCC, Tuesday (NNN) — Applications for children to be taken into care in England have risen sharply in the wake of the case of Baby P.

Children’s Minister Ed Balls has unveiled well-thought-out and in no way hurried plans for every area of England to be covered by a Children’s Trust Board (CTB), which will “absolutely prevent” all possible abuse, as demanded by right-thinking members of the public and their favoured newspapers.

“We see this as the only way to assure the safety of children,” said Mr Balls. “No training, no qualifications, no criminal records bureau check … parents are the last people you’d want having anything to do with children.”

Incoming infants will be DNA sampled, barcoded, issued with My First ID Card (in comforting baby-blue and soft-pink) and stacked in Ministry of Education Upbringing Centres — to be constructed in a PFI deal with PartyPoker Beacon Academies plc — before being migrated to the JobCentre Reserve Labour Stacks upon their sixteenth birthday.

“Making sure that we develop and invest in the staff who are on this very lonely frontline service is vital,” he added. Social workers will be equipped with helmets and tasers. “Experts at Haringey Council have offered training.”

WINEHOUSE CASINO, 11 Downing Street, Tuesday (NNN) — Prime Ministerial glove-puppet Alistair Darling detailed Labour’s economic stimulus package today. “We must keep the economy moving. As usual, we will achieve this by recruiting more civil servants and shuffling taxes around. Quick, which shell’s the VAT under? We will also force banks to lend more without such rapacious antisocial considerations as ability to pay back the loans.”

“The bank bailout was a mere coverup for the Labour government’s gross economic mismanagement during ten years of prosperity,” said David Cameron. “That sort of irresponsible capitalism, let run loose in a plague of free enterprise, would never have been allowed to happen under a Tory government … stop sniggering over there.”

“The Prime Minister is like a drunk who has woken to the most appalling hangover,” said Boris Johnson, “and who reaches for the whisky bottle to help him dull the pain.”

“Not to worry,” said Mr Darling, “we’re taxing the hell out of drink too.”

“The recession must take its course,” said shadow health spokesman Andrew Lansley. “Recession improves the moral fibre of the nation. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend more time at home with their families. They sit around the wireless in communal bonhomie, huddled for warmth and filled with the Blitz spirit, listening to the BBC Home Service, feeling reassured that all is right with the world once more and the BBC announcer is broadcasting wearing a dinner jacket.” Mr Darling responded with threats to put Lord Mandelson on Strictly Come Dancing.

The Metropolitan Police rejected plans to order 10,000 taser weapons for police on the beat, but said they may reconsider in the event of a Conservative government.

THE ENTERPRISE, The Federation, stardate Saturday (NNN) — The number of female IT professionals in the UK is falling, according to the British Computer Society, despite similar or superior academic scores and recruitment in the sector as a whole having risen in the same timeframe. The lack of flexibility offered by employers is blamed.

“It’s a free market world,” said Ubuntu Linux developer Hiram Nerdboy. “It’s about competence and getting the job done. Working sixteen hours a day on a project you really love is par for the course. That we’re all eighteen to twenty-five is from the accelerated Internet-based learning of the new generation, not exploitation of young workers who don’t know any better.”

Over a third of women in IT had complained of sexism up to sexual harassment at work. “It’s women who just don’t have social skills,” said Nerdboy. “They object to the guys freely choosing to all go down the strip club after work. They’re just not team players.”

Open source projects have worse figures than industry, with male to female ratios approaching fifty-to-one. Many women cite gross sexism on mailing lists and IRC. “In my experience, women just don’t have a working sense of humour and can’t take a joke. My girlfriend thought it was funny! Even leaving helpful comments on their blogs didn’t work. ‘Political correctness’ is no exaggeration. Anyway, I met my girlfriend online!”

“…,” said his girlfriend, RealDoll Ada.

“And it’s not like you can get the applicants,” added Nerdboy. “We can hardly get any girls to apply for a job here. They’re obviously naturally not good enough geeks. It must be evolutionary. We need more pink computers.”

“This is of course a terrible, terrible state of affairs,” said a spokesman for the Confederation of British Industry. “In the meantime, we need lots more IT workers shipped in from overseas.” He was later heard muttering something about “divide and conquer” and sniggering.

BARKING, Utterly, Wednesday (NNN) — The British National Party’s conference karaoke has been cancelled owing to the song list going missing.

TalkSport DJ Rod Lucas has been fired. “Jonathan Ross was only suspended for twelve weeks!” Mr Lucas will be bringing suit, said his solicitor, BNP member Mr Blobby.

Songs from the list include “Keep The White Flag Flying”, “The Story Of The Whites”, “Ivory and Ivory”, “99 White Balloons”, “Lolcat Has Only Got One Ball” and the singalong favourite “Here We Go”, although organisers have to be sure to distribute the lyric sheet first.

Nick Griffin reassured the public they would stand firm. “We swear that we will never give you up. We will never let you down. We will never run around or desert you.” In a later comment, Rick Astley told the twat to fuck off.

The BNP constitution specifies that all singers must be white and the music list must be ethnically cleansed of any funkiness or natural rhythm. Rick Astley still told the twats to fuck off.

The Labour Party’s complete song list has also been released, to no interest whatsoever and a rejection letter from Wikileaks.

PAGE 3, Financial Times, Friday (NNN) — Alistair Darling today admitted that the economy was disastrously seized up, with one in twelve London workers likely to lose their job.

Across town, Nigella Lawson wore a low-cut dress revealing quite spectacular quantities of well-nourished breastage, with photos in all papers.

In the United States, Wall Street is melting away like Belloq’s face after Indy told him not to look in the Ark and Henry Paulson said he would not use the second $350 billion of the stimulus package, leaving the economy unpushed at a critical time and the Detroit car manufacturers on the verge of collapse.

In Australia, Nicola McLean’s breasts, which had undergone hyperinflation, were marvelously decorative and pointy and set off nicely by the other I’m A Celebrity bikini babes, Dani Behr and Carly Zucker, despite the influx of Robert Kilroy-Silk and kangaroo testicles.

Back in the UK, the economy is deflating, the banks have seized up, no-one is buying or selling houses and next week you’ll have to eat your shoes. And John Sergeant is a huge tit.

“But at least we’re not short of massive boobs,” said Mr Darling. “And call and vote on Strictly Come Dancing! Before the telly’s repossessed.”